FDR’s Great Depression, Jimmy Carter’s 1970’s malaise, and Obama’s never-ending Great Recession all have one thing in common — progressive Democrat policies.

Recessions happen. Recessions are a normal part of the business cycle; the natural ebb and flow of economic growth. Recessions, when the market is allowed to work, historically correct themselves fairly quickly — better still when the market is actually freed up.

Depressions, on the other hand, take work. Depressions take arrogance. Depressions take Democrats — the mind-boggling belief that government seizure, command and centralized control of millions of individual economic decisions will somehow foster and aid growth; that punishing economic activity with greater taxation and regulation will somehow encourage more of it; the inexplicable faith that what is most needed in times of economic stagnation is more bureaucracy.

A new study by UCLA economists, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, affirms what conservatives have long known — that FDR’s New Deal policies thwarted economic recovery for seven long years and turned what should have been a recession into the Great Depression:

“High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns,” Ohanian said. “As we’ve seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market’s self-correcting forces.” [read more]

“Progressives” do not ease economic suffering — they cause it. They do not fix recessions, they cause depressions.

These are lessons that Americans can and should apply to our current endless recession. The reason the economy is not getting better is because the same people who caused it are still in control. Democrats did not inherit this recession — they’ve controlled both houses of congress since a year before it even began and two years before the financial crisis hit. When President Bush and Republicans tried over 20 times to reform Fannie and Freddy, warning of exactly the kind of economic disaster we had if they were not reformed, Democrats blocked them. The economy went south in response to their promises of massive tax increases, massive new spending, massive new regulation and has been unable to recover as no one knows what industry these American fascists will seize next, what massive new regulations and entitlements they will burden industry with — in short, the economy sucks because everyone with two nickles to rub together is terrified of what Democrats will do next.